Seagulls

As someone who lives near the beach, I feel qualified to make the following scientific observation: Seagulls are evil.

Not seagulls, you say. Yes. Seagulls. They feed on carcass, they have no friends, they crap on everything -- they're the lawyers of marine vertebrates.

A seagull's opinion of you is based largely on whether you're holding food, which includes bread, items that look like bread, and small, bread-like pets. Seagulls are timid individually, but in numbers they get in your face like hammered Irishman until, worst case, they go Alfred Hitchcock.

"He's got the size, men, but we've got the numbers."

One day I left a trash bag outside and later opened the door to a stream of coffee grinds and egg yolk leading to the street, where four seagulls were fighting over a wine cork.

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

Last Sunday I went to Ana Cappa Island -- or for all the guano, Ana Crappa Island -- which is the Cancun of seagull social life. Males fly in from all over to get drunk, have wild orgies, and flee like nothing happened.

"Dude, what happens in Ana Crappa stays in Ana Crappa."


Including their offspring, which females stay behind to hatch. By the time we tourists get there, the ladies are completely hormonal and lash out as you pass. Seriously, one of the little haters bit my leg when I wandered off to pee. (Good thing I'm quick with a zipper.)

Seagulls relieve themselves ten times more often than necessary, something known to ornithologists as recreational discharge. They bomb your windshield, your swimming pool, your children... Father seagulls hover above car washes teaching the ropes to their children.

"The trick to hitting a mobile target, son, is to release early like this..."

And let's not forget the seagull that dropped a turtle on that Florida highway, causing a four-car collision. Coincidence? Don't be naive.

Now, I don't believe in killing animals. As a boy, I spent two months' allowance freeing the lobsters from a local Ralphs. I crusaded for restaurants where people had to meet their food beforehand, a Meet-Your-Meat Café.

That said, I propose that we eat seagulls. Believe me: They would do the same to you. They'd kill you and beat with your own corpse. Dieticians are always promoting fish and fowl, fish and fowl. Well, with seagulls you get both.

Imagine the possibilities: seagull piccata, seagull noodle soup, Thanksgiving seagull. I'll bet if we ask nicely, Ted Nugent would try the seagull tartare.

How did seagulls make the white list anyway? Chickens and ducks get the knife, but seagulls are free to wander the skies excreting on our children. I thought the rule was that we eat animals so long as they're not smart or cuddly. Seagulls aren't bright enough to avoid large buildings and so unattractive that when they mate, they think of pelicans. So it goes.

Even as we speak -- no kidding -- there's a seagull outside my window, squawking like a madman at life, the universe, and everything. He won't look me in the eye; seagulls never do. They're like felons with dark stories.

And I'll just bet he's waiting for a target to relieve himself, painful as it is to hold the runs from a burrito he swallowed whole while the others screeched in their little lawyer voices, Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!